Are you saying I need to learn medieval French, German and Italian etc (and revise Latin) to access the primary sources in person, Temp?  I don't know if the 60-something brain is up to it; though it is said that language studies help keep the brain active.   Of course even then I might bring MY preconceived ideas into the mix and think like a person who has lived in the 20th/21st centuries rather than in medieval times.

LadyinRetirement, I once asked an historian I know in passing for advice on where to look for information on a particular subject. He thought for a moment, and then opened his reply with, "How's your Medieval French?"

LadyinRetirement wrote:

  Of course even then I might bring MY preconceived ideas into the mix and think like a person who has lived in the 20th/21st centuries rather than in medieval times.

Of course you would - it's inevitable.

As for your other question - we are all dependent on the translators - and that of course is another can of worms.

Anglo-Norman wrote:

LadyinRetirement, I once asked an historian I know in passing for advice on where to look for information on a particular subject.  He thought for a moment, and then opened his reply with, "How's your Medieval French?"

AN, I did a couple of years at Birkbeck College well over 30 years ago and we studied some of Aucassin et Nicolette and Yvain then.  I didn't finish the course and have forgotten practically everything I learned.  Temp is also right that I would bring my own ideas into play even if I didn't want to.  This might be somewhere to start with the medieval French I suppose.  

On a lighter note, hopeless addict of Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire that I am, I like them despite them being somewhat flawed.  I didn't notice it myself but someone else mentioned that in the first book/first season of the show a will was made and in both versions there were no witnesses.  The story is loosely based on the War of the Roses (and also took inspiration from Maurice Druon's The Accursed Kings plus some random inspiration from other periods of history).  I'm pretty sure that for a written will, especially for that of a noble, there would have been witnesses in both medieval France and England.

Temperance wrote:

MM being "trundled" (perfect word!) up to Bamburgh Castle in his pushchair - what a lovely image!

The Grace Darling Museum was still there, MM, and still shut. The notice last Wednesday informed us: "Closed due to weather conditions". To be fair, it was a bit blowy that day, with Storm Ali gusts of over 75mph...

Hermitage Castle is indeed a really frightening place. I have since read about the Redcap - and the "Wizard" Lord of Hermitage who consorted with him. I honestly think I would have died of fright had I been locked up alone within that fortress. It is a ruin inside, as you say,  but, yes, all the outer walls are intact and there is a door which the person at the ticket office locks at night. I hope he/she always checks that no one is still wandering about inside!

Primary sources - well yes - but the trouble is always the reader of the sources, however erudite and reliable he or she may seem to be. The postmodern dilemma. We all bring our own lives/ experiences/ cultural expectations to what we read and interpret historic events accordingly. I'm struggling at the moment to see John Knox's point of view - he was after all a truly great social reformer - but God, I bet Mary wanted to thump him - or worse laugh at him. Maybe she did - big mistake - never, ever laugh at men like Knox!

Temperance and LiR,

"Primary sources - well yes - but the trouble is always the reader of the sources, however erudite and reliable he or she may seem to be. The postmodern dilemma. We all bring our own lives/ experiences/ cultural expectations to what we read and interpret historic events accordingly. I'm struggling at the moment to see John Knox's point of view - he was after all a truly great social reformer - but God, I bet Mary wanted to thump him - or worse laugh at him. Maybe she did - big mistake - never, ever laugh at men like Knox!"

Wise words (in excellent English) Temperance and indeed that is the essence of the matter. Interpretation...we discussed it on the BBC nearly to dead as on Historum as overhere with nordmann...for instance about the reactions on an event: one has to nearly transpose oneself in the thinking world of that particular period and therefore it is difficult to make a value judgement (spelling? "waardeoordeel" in Dutch). And in my opinion it is not the role of a historian to judge.

"Are you saying I need to learn medieval French, German and Italian etc (and revise Latin) to access the primary sources in person, Temp?  I don't know if the 60-something brain is up to it; though it is said that language studies help keep the brain active.   Of course even then I might bring MY preconceived ideas into the mix and think like a person who has lived in the 20th/21st centuries rather than in medieval times."

Wise reaction too, LiR (in my humble opinion, the same for Temperance),
And to your last sentence I answered already to Temperance.
Yes translations in nowadays English are available for most sources about "serious" events, but as Temperance, nordmann and you and me will say, translation is also a difficult work as we have seen here many times on this Res Historica as a word or a context of the concerned time can have quiite another connotation as the same in identical modern English, not to speak of translations from other languages, for instance first in modern German and then in English...not to speak from the medieval Japanese of the 17th or was it the 18th century...

Kind regards to both of you from Paul.

Addendum.

Sorry, hadn't read the later messages.

Regards from Paul.

A very quick reply, Paul; don't worry your input on primary sources was interesting.  Apart from a translation into modern English of a primary source possibly having something lost "in translation", I find that the translations (not that I've looked at many) tend to be written in a very boring style.

Not 100% sure if this is the right thread but Temperance did mention upthread that she had visited some  sites in Scotland associated with Mary Queen of Scots.  I mentioned there are a couple of places linked to her that I could visit but I'd have to catch a bus.  Here somebody has sent a drone overhead Chartley Castle.  It is very much a ruin though it has been restored as much as possible but is on private land and therefore not open to the public.  

Again, a drone flying over Tixall Gatehouse.  I remember when it had no roof, but some people bought it and "did it up" and now it is a hotel.  Tixall Hall went a long time ago - in the 19th century I think.  The mews (the group of dwellings) I think are fairly new (1980s or 1990s though there may be some that were servants' quarters).  My understanding is that mews at one time was another word for stables.  I really should know more as the village of Tixall is not that far as the crow flies from where I live.  Mary was imprisoned here for a couple of weeks before being taken back to Chartley and then Fotheringay.

Chartley Hall was the place where some of the most distressing and dramatic scenes of Mary's life unfolded. The Babington plot was uncovered there.

Chartley belonged to the young Earl of Essex who had inherited in 1576. Essex was most put out when he was informed  that his property was being considered as a suitable prison for the Scottish queen: it was most definitely not an honour to have Mary as a "house guest/prisoner". Chartley, ironically, had seen happier, more "chivalrous" days: Elizabeth had visited the place with Leicester, and had actually been a guest there after her famous stay  at Kenilworth in 1575. Her hostess at Chartley was the beautiful Lettice Knollys who was at that time Lady Essex. She was possibly already having an affair with Leicester right under the queen's nose. (Leicester and Lettice were secretly married in 1578.)

There had been real romance at Chartley; it was at Chartley that Philip Sidney first laid eyes on the teenage Penelope Devereux (later poor Penny Rich), "the inspiration of his muse" and the lovely Stella of his sonnets.

Chartley, however, held no romance for Mary. She was utterly miserable there. Her gaoler was Sir Amyas Paulet, a self-righteous and judgmental man who had no sympathy or understanding for a woman like the Queen of Scots. He was a fundamentalist Protestant, and in his attitude to her religious beliefs he showed the total incomprehension of the bigot, a humourless man of the type who can see nothing fine or sincere in the convictions of those with whom they do not agree. Mary's despairing description of him of him echoes down the centuries: "One of the strangest and most farouche men I have ever known."


* Farouche  - wild, savage, intimidating, sullen

Belatedly, thank you to Temperance for the background information about Chartley, and to Paul for the information about primary sources.

People know that I am something of a Game of Thrones fan though I am trying to avoid "spoilers" about the next and final season at present.  Recently I have listened to a little of the first book of The Witcher series by Polish author Andrej Sapkowski but I can't really say I know the work.  Netflix is going to make a series based on the books and have recently announced their casting.  Some people weren't pleased because the casting included people of mixed race (who were in the minority to be honest).  But there have been claims about the stories being Slavic and that there aren't many people of colour in Poland an certainly weren't in medieval Poland.  It's a fantasy series so I don't really see the problem myself.  I looked on the internet to see what Poland's involvement in the Crusades was and it does appear to have been limited but then again in a fantasy series you can have a green sky or trees with blue leaves or whatever.  Some fans of the books (and a series of computer games based on the books) have said they are not going to watch the series.  I'm sure Netflix are quaking in their boots.  Some comments people who were against the castings made me think of a verse of the Sidney Carter song about knocking on the window on a Christmas Day

"Jesus Christ has gone to heaven and they say He's coming back sir
And we'll all be there to meet him, just as long as He's not black sir" 
(quoted from memory so could be a little inaccurate)

aiui the "mews" was originally the place where the falcons and hawks were kept "mewed up" when moulting. Later used for a building with a carriage house below and living quarters above.
Here is a tale of a mews.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHuc_Nutv-s

I didn't know that was the source of the terms "mews", G, but it makes sense.

I've yet to see this. Has anyone else seen it?

Director Peter Jackson talks to film critic Mark Kermode about his WW1 film, "They shall not grow old", made by altering the frame speeds and colourising the original footage;



It's on BBC 2 on Sunday night:

They shall not grow old

Thanks Triceratops, will look at it on TV2 on 1 January and copy it on my hard disc of the TV distribution.

That's looks like really interesting "reportages" of one hundred years old.

Kind regards from Paul.

In Tora Tora Tora there is a scene where a Japanese messenger delivers a telegram to the office of General Short.

I thought this scene was just a cinematic device to show racial tension after the attack, but it turns out Tadao Fuchikami was the messenger who delivered the telegram to General Short's headquarters on 7th December 1941.

It's in Gordon Prange's book At Dawn We Slept. Prange's earlier research forming much of the basis for Tora, Tora, Tora.

Can we ever be sure of what is "accurate" in history? Perhaps not. But some things are definitely unlikely.

I have been watching this afternoon the very enjoyable Elizabeth - the film starring Cate Blanchett as the formidable Tudor - but gosh, the portrayal of Walsingham as a sexy bisexual (he has an affair with a pretty French boy earlier in the film) was utterly ridiculous - as was the presentation of Marie de Guise. Here Mary de Guise and Sir Francis are preparing to enjoy a night together in a four-poster somewhere in Edinburgh (presumably at Holyrood). According to the historical sources, the brave but unhappy mother of MQS was at the time badly swollen with the dropsy that eventually killed her and sex, especially with Sir Francis Walsingham of all people, was probably the last thing on her mind. Elizabeth's Puritan spymaster (a man who actually made John Knox look like an abandoned libertine) must be turning in his grave.

I have never read of any record of Elizabeth sending Francis Walsingham to Scotland.


PS Forgot to add that Walsingham apparently murders Marie de Guise in the four-poster - unless, of course, she simply expired of passion in the arms of the cunning English envoy.

I haven't seen that film and know that it has been praised but I seem to have missed the CB appreciation gene.

As regards the Peter Jackson film of WWI, on another board someone wrote the following, which I think was pretty much what the critics were saying. I replied to her saying she was very lucky they put it on BBC2; we won't get it on free-to-air NZ television. (Anyway I would have to watch it on my own - my husband won't watch anything realistic about war - MASH was about his limit.)


"I also saw the Peter Jackson film when it was shown on BBC2 on Remembrance Day. It was totally mind blowing at the beginning, as the black and white slowly transformed into colour it looked so good it almost looked like a film, but as it went on and I saw the familiar footage and also still photographs which have been seen many times over the decades in many other WW1 documentaries in its original black and white form was shown, it went from compelling to uncomfortable viewing and then to totally shocking, no punches were pulled and the hell those men went though unfolds before your very eyes, as seeing dead soldiers and blood soaked body parts lying around was even more shocking when seeing it again in full colour and when it was also complete with the sound of buzzing flies – it was literally as those men experienced it. I never moved, I sat motionless and silent throughout the entire thing with my mouth hanging open! I think the fact it was done with such obvious care and consideration, made it all the more moving, the old grainy black and white images are now with the technology used crystal clear, sharp and colourised – and colourised very well so they looked as if they had always been that way, he also added sound it, apparently he also employed lip readers to figure out what was being said in some of the footage so we could actually hear what was happening at that point in the trenches, and he also added background sound, it was accompanied by interviews which had been done over the years with the men who, now long dead were there at the time. It was a fitting tribute to that entire generation who was lost."

Temperance wrote:

Can we ever be sure of what is "accurate" in history? Perhaps not. But some things are definitely unlikely.

I have been watching this afternoon the very enjoyable Elizabeth - the film starring Cate Blanchett as the formidable Tudor - but gosh, the portrayal of Walsingham as a sexy bisexual (he has an affair with a pretty French boy earlier in the film) was utterly ridiculous - as was the presentation of Marie de Guise. Here Mary de Guise and Sir Francis are preparing to enjoy a night together in a four-poster somewhere in Edinburgh (presumably at Holyrood). According to the historical sources, the brave but unhappy mother of MQS was at the time badly swollen with the dropsy that eventually killed her and sex, especially with Sir Francis Walsingham of all people, was probably the last thing on her mind. Elizabeth's Puritan spymaster (a man who actually made John Knox look like an abandoned libertine) must be turning in his grave.

I have never read of any record of Elizabeth sending Francis Walsingham to Scotland.

Temperance,

you don't believe it and has nothing to do with the subject, but when I saw the picture in your message out of context I was guessing what the "thing" in the hands of the lady could be. As the picture on my computer was a bit "flou" (hazy). And I saw  a kind of a marble pin with a gold ring and ending in a reproduction (I guess in ivory) of a bunch of spagetti...when I later in the film saw the context: why is the haft not in the same line of the knife?

And now Temperance I have to search on the net for the whole history including Walsingham, a name that I saw for the first time on the French Passion Histoire as the nom de plume of a contributor...

Kind regards from Paul.

I'm wondering whether to give the new (I think made for TV) Outlaw King about Robert the Bruce a watch.  (It was on YouTube though I daresay it will be taken down pretty quickly).  Stephen Dillane is in it as Longshanks.  I've heard that there are some inaccuracies but less so than in Braveheart.

Saw Saoirse Ronan interviewed last week about her new role as Mary Queen of Scots. She mentioned that nearly every drama/film about the unhappy Scottish lass has her meeting with Elizabeth - something that never happened, of course. Ronan blamed Schiller whose play, "Mary Stuart: A Tragedy"  (1800), first imagined such a dramatic encounter between the two queens. I bought an English translation of the drama from Amazon a couple of days ago - only £3.99 - and it's very good, if wildly inaccurate. Nothing like a nice bit of blank verse to bring history to life.  

Has anyone else read/seen this play? There was rather an unusual production in London last year apparently: I really regret missing it:

http://www.thisistheatre.com/londonshows/marystuart.html

I'd never thought of Schiller's play as being the origin of the fictional meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, Temperance. Sadly I've never seen nor read the play.  I mentioned before that I liked the old film about The Private Life of Henry VIII with Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester which of course wasn't entirely true to history.  I was quite young when I saw it and all I really knew then was that Henry VIII had had six wives - "Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived" as the old mnemonic rhyme goes.  Would I have enjoyed it if I'd known the details of Henry and his wives at that time - I honestly don't know.  There are some films/TV shows that can be enjoyed (by me at least) in a "so bad they are good" sort of way but then Mrs Greggers' work drives me batty.  Apparently as well as playing our (as in our in the UK) reigning monarch in The Crown Olivia Coleman has a film Favourite which will be released in the not too distant future about Queen Anne and her friendships with Sarah Churchill and Abigail Hill.  I read something about it and it looked as if the show runners were including a gay relationship with Queen Anne and Abigail.  That put me off straightaway - I don't know that there's anything in history that implies that Queen Anne and Lady Masham as she became had a gay relationship.  It's the fact that such a relationship seems (to me at least) to be purely fictional that dissuades me from wanting to watch it.  Of course, if anybody visiting the board can say that there was such a relationship between the Queen and Lady Masham I will stand corrected.

I came across a blog about Louis XIV called "partylike1660" when I was trying to find out how true to what actually happened in that monarch's reign the Versailles TV series was.  It seems there were quite a few liberties taken.  I think most visitors to this site know I rather like the Game of Thrones fantasy show.  That is mainly based on a loose retelling and reworking of the Wars of the Roses (obviously no-one had dragons during the War of the Roses) but I think Mr Martin the writer of the books on which the show is based borrowed from other parts of history and from myth and maybe folksongs (or are folksongs mythical?).  One of the characters is a girl child who is on the run and disguises herself as a boy for safety when travelling.  The "partylike1660" has an interesting article about a Julie d'Aubigny who sometimes dressed in male costumes and fought - I wonder if Mr Martin ever read her history before writing about the girl child in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, though the book/show character, being a child is not sexually adventurous.  Anyway, I am providing a link to the blog post about Mademoiselle d'Aubigny and people can visit and read if they wish - or not if they don't wish.  [url=partylike1660.com/julie-daubigny-mademoiselle-maupin/]partylike1660.com/julie-daubigny-mademoiselle-maupin/[/url]

Lady,

http://partylike1660.com/julie-daubigny-mademoiselle-maupin/

your interests are quite widespread I would say...and that is a good thing in my humble opinion...

Kind regards from Paul.

To return to the original thesis:
Obviously not.
Box office receipts reveal that.

I think it's more that I have a darting from one thing to another sort of character, Paul - and sometimes researching one topic leads to another.  Also, with a (smallish) group of ladies I used to take part in a (one every two months) shorthand journal (we wrote the articles in shorthand but they were hand written not printed).  The lady who co-ordinated it has been ill the last couple of years (more so than I was when I had the low red blood corpuscle count because of the coeliac disease) so it's fallen into abeyance. Sometimes I try to think of ideas in case the "magazine" starts up again.  Then when I was ill I couldn't get out to my interests so much (and I lost a lot of confidence last year - when I broke my arm - about going out in snowy or icy weather).  The internet and reading books were of some help to me in passing the time then.  As I've said before some of the time I spent on looking at conspiracy theories was wasteful in retrospect, though it did make me look at where theories might have started and at the current ruling about defamation laws (which differs in various countries of course).  Sign language was something I'd wanted to study for a long time but when I was working full-time I couldn't really allocate myself spare time to study it.

Thinking about what G says above, Braveheart was a popular film although it was terribly inaccurate.

I mentioned on the Tumbleweed Suite that I've been reading some whodunnits before I go to sleep lately.  (Thanks to the local library).  I have sometimes watched BBC4's (as in TV) European programmes.  A few years ago I watched an adaptation of Arne Dahl's Swedish thrillers and just before Christmas I managed to find a book where I hadn't already seen the TV version (though I don't know how I missed it).  One change the TV adaptation had made was to change Jan-Olov Hultin in the books to Jenny Hultin (played by an actress called Irene Lindh)

One episode in the book involves wolverines (Gulo gulo) in a zoo at Stockholm.  It mentions that wolverines are becoming rarer in Sweden.  I never realised there were European wolverines.  Although I was never particularly a tomboy sort of girl I read some of Rutherford G Montgomery's books (set in the American west though in the 20th century not the "wild west") and one of his books was called "Carcajou" (what native Americans call the wolverine) so I knew they existed in America.

Ah yes - I recall that book!

Another alteration I found inexplicable - "Krakatoa - East of Java". I'm sure many people would have been surprised to learn in the last few days that Anak Krakatau, the relic of Krakatoa, was conspicuously WEST of Java.

I actually gave up geography as a subject before O level, Gil.  It wasn't taught very well in my (senior) school*.  If I had had a better teacher things might have been different.  I never knew about Krakatoa being west of Java - did the people making the film think "west of Java" had less of a ring to it.  I've seen comments online where fans of TV shows such as Reign and adaptations of books by one Mrs Greggers have criticised people who have said those shows were not for them as they were too divorced from real history.  What happened to debate?  I did have one lady in real life jump down my throat because I said I thought Mrs Greggers played somewhat fast and loose with history.  Another lady said well she knew they were inaccurate but they were okay when she wanted a light read.
 
* Of course in these days of the internet I can google the whereabouts of Krakatoa - or at least look at a map (or google Anak Krakatau).  Is that the source of the eruption/tsunami that has wreaked havoc in Indonesia recently, Gil?

Vizzer wrote:

By coincidence the naming of the tree as ‘monkey puzzle’ did take place in Cornwall and indeed at Pencarrow (where part of the series is filmed) but that was not until the 1850s. That was when the owner Baronet Molesworth was showing off the Chilean Pine on his property to guest Charles Austin QC, a barrister who had made a fortune advocating on behalf of the railway companies. On seeing the tree’s unusual branches and spines Austin remarked “It would puzzle a monkey to climb that!” and thus the name was coined.

Our Striped One might confirm or refute this, but isn't the French name le désespoir du singe. I'm sure an exchange student told me it was.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I actually gave up geography as a subject before O level, Gil.  It wasn't taught very well in my (senior) school*.  If I had had a better teacher things might have been different.  I never knew about Krakatoa being west of Java - did the people making the film think "west of Java" had less of a ring to it.  I've seen comments online where fans of TV shows such as Reign and adaptations of books by one Mrs Greggers have criticised people who have said those shows were not for them as they were too divorced from real history.  What happened to debate?  I did have one lady in real life jump down my throat because I said I thought Mrs Greggers played somewhat fast and loose with history.  Another lady said well she knew they were inaccurate but they were okay when she wanted a light read.
 
* Of course in these days of the internet I can google the whereabouts of Krakatoa - or at least look at a map (or google Anak Krakatau).  Is that the source of the eruption/tsunami that has wreaked havoc in Indonesia recently, Gil?

Ah yes. I desisted from the study of geography at the earliest possible moment, along with Latin. After all, "Eheu fugaces labuntur, Annie" isn't much use when your significant other is called Margaret.

Yes, that was the source of the underwater landslip which caused the tsunami.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I mentioned on the Tumbleweed Suite that I've been reading some whodunnits before I go to sleep lately.  (Thanks to the local library).  I have sometimes watched BBC4's (as in TV) European programmes.  A few years ago I watched an adaptation of Arne Dahl's Swedish thrillers and just before Christmas I managed to find a book where I hadn't already seen the TV version (though I don't know how I missed it).  One change the TV adaptation had made was to change Jan-Olov Hultin in the books to Jenny Hultin (played by an actress called Irene Lindh)

One episode in the book involves wolverines (Gulo gulo) in a zoo at Stockholm.  It mentions that wolverines are becoming rarer in Sweden.  I never realised there were European wolverines.  Although I was never particularly a tomboy sort of girl I read some of Rutherford G Montgomery's books (set in the American west though in the 20th century not the "wild west") and one of his books was called "Carcajou" (what native Americans call the wolverine) so I knew they existed in America.

Lady,

of course I had to seek what wolverines were...thought of a kind of wolves...but no...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolverine

In Dutch I see now that they are called "veelvraat" (a glutton)
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veelvraat_(zoogdier)
And "glutton you will think...



and they are from the family of the "marter" (marten)...the biggest one...

What one all learns on this board...or is pointed to...

And PS. We have now wolves in Belgium...came in from Germany...and next year the two of the opposite sex will have some little wolves...at the end a pack...and one is not allowed to shoot them because they are protected...the authorities ask to protect the sheep and other stuff...and the farmers will receive a compensation if some sheep are bitten dead...


Kind regards from Paul.

Will some of those little wolves "jump" a lorry bound for the ferry at Ostend, I wonder.*  I think sheep farmers are allowed to have guns to protect their livestock in the case of dogs "worrying" the sheep.  Someone I knew (now deceased) who was blind went to stay with one of his daughters towards the end of his life because he needed more assistance at that stage of his life.  One of his other daughters and her husband kept his guide dog because the one looking after the Dad and her husband lived in an area which was very much sheep country.  The dog (a German Shepherd) was actually a very friendly, perhaps even soppy dog, who wouldn't have hurt a fly but a farmer might have been inclined to shoot first and ask questions after so they decided to play safe.

* I.e. find their way to the UK.  Sometimes wolves which have escaped from zoos have ended up being shot in this country - though I'm not saying a wolf escaping from a zoo is something that happens all that often.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Will some of those little wolves "jump" a lorry bound for the ferry at Ostend, I wonder.*  I think sheep farmers are allowed to have guns to protect their livestock in the case of dogs "worrying" the sheep.  Someone I knew (now deceased) who was blind went to stay with one of his daughters towards the end of his life because he needed more assistance at that stage of his life.  One of his other daughters and her husband kept his guide dog because the one looking after the Dad and her husband lived in an area which was very much sheep country.  The dog (a German Shepherd) was actually a very friendly, perhaps even soppy dog, who wouldn't have hurt a fly but a farmer might have been inclined to shoot first and ask questions after so they decided to play safe.

* I.e. find their way to the UK.  Sometimes wolves which have escaped from zoos have ended up being shot in this country - though I'm not saying a wolf escaping from a zoo is something that happens all that often.

Lady,

" I think sheep farmers are allowed to have guns to protect their livestock in the case of dogs "worrying" the sheep."

Not with the protected wolves in Belgium
https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20180124_03318490

Boetes
Wie in Vlaanderen een wolf doodt, riskeert vijf jaar gevangenisstraf en een boete van 500.000 euro. In Wallonië zijn ze dan weer iets minder streng: daar riskeer je één jaar gevangenisstraf en 100.000 euro boete, zo schrijft Het Laatste Nieuws.
Fees
Flemish region: up to five years jail and up to 500,000 Euro
Walloon region: up to one year and up to 100,000 Euro.
 
Kind regards from Paul.

There are wolves around here, but they stay up in the high mountains and don't seem to cause any trouble. The mayor of the village has a few hundred sheep grazing on the hillside and he doesn't seem worried about them, although he does have three of four big Pyrenean dogs (like Belle in 'Belle and Sébastian') which live year round with the sheep and whose job is specifically to guard them against predators, rustlers or just domestic dogs running off their leash. We have lynx too, and I have actually seen one of them, crossing the lane only about a kilometre from the house. Again they generally keep clear of people and cause no trouble unlike the fox that managed to get into my neighbours' hen-house, with predictable results.

Meles meles wrote:

There are wolves around here, but they stay up in the high mountains and don't seem to cause any trouble. The mayor of the village has a few hundred sheep grazing on the hillside and he doesn't seem worried about them, although he does have three of four big Pyrenean dogs (like Belle in 'Belle and Sébastian') which live year round with the sheep and whose job is specifically to guard them against predators, rustlers or just domestic dogs running off their leash. We have lynx too, and I have actually seen one of them, crossing the lane only about a kilometre from the house. Again they generally keep clear of people and cause no trouble unlike the fox that managed to get into my neighbours' hen-house, with predictable results.

Meles meles,

what a rough country there in your neck of the woods. Wolves seem not to attack people, the authorities say here, but here in the crowded Belgium it is full of livestock, even in the Ardennes. In my opinion they will not able to let grow the wolves population above the amount of four packs for the risk of even attacks on humans...

Kind regards from Paul.

I guess time will tell about the wolves in Belgium.

Foxy is opportunistic I believe and of course he doesn't realise he has broken into Farmer Giles' hen coop (well obviously not Farmer Giles if it's in France) and he just thinks he's won the lottery as regards food and goes for all the hens and not just one.  When I was learning shorthand I remember one of the practice pieces had something about "...for mink are to trout what foxes are to chickens"... i.e. stinky minky will go ballistic and kill as many trout as he can, not just one.

Edit: Changed "stinky pinky" to "stinky minky" - drat Autocorrect and drat the fact I didn't pick up the error when I originally commented.

I may have mentioned upthread that there was a YouTube channel called Lost in Adaptation (the name has changed - I think it is The Dom) now.  The young man running the channel compares films/TV shows with their source material (usually a novel) and reviews what stays the same, what changes, what is completely new for the film.

Not exactly a change in adaptation, but I think on the children's book thread someone (maybe nordmann?) mentioned that Enid Blyton's work had been changed over the years to be more acceptable to a modern audience.  This is a bit frivolous, but I mentioned that in the TV adaptation of Arne Dahl's (Swedish) novels about A-Team the team leader (Hultin) had been made female.  Well, I've realised that in the older "Rupert Bear" books Rupert's friends were nearly all male and the Pekingese, Ping-Pong was a boy.  On the last Rupert Bear TV shows I saw (no, they're not my staple fare before anyone starts teasing) the Pekingese was female and her name was Pong-Ping.

I did some searching around on the internet about how true to life a gay relationship between Queen Anne and Lady Masham could have been.  I did mention in an earlier thread that I didn't mind a gay relationship being included in a historical narrative as long as it wasn't a fabricated one.  A couple of articles I found say that before they fell out, Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill's friendship may have been very close but that it hasn't been established whether it actually had a sexual nature or not.  It does seem that when she fell from favour Sarah Churchill tried to blackmail Queen Anne threatening to publish some of her letters but that backfired on her.  https://people.com/royals/the-favourite-queen-anne-lesbian-love-triangle-fact-checking/  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34957424

So it seems that the people behind the film didn't pick the notion out of fresh air but is a "maybe" though personally I'd go with the idea of Queen Anne as having been strait-laced - she does seem to have been a religious lady and genuinely fond of her husband.  Some years ago I enjoyed reading Louis Auchincloss's Exit Lady Masham.  I doubt that was 100% true to history but Lady Masham was treated sympathetically there.

Lady,

to prove that I read all your utterings ...voilà...
"strait-laced"...you Brits with your rich vocabulary...had to look in my paperback Collins: "prudish" (that I understand better, as we have in Dutch "preuts"), "puritanical" and that's easy too as it is Latin...and French: "puritain".

Kind regrds from Paul.

The two locals, Louki and Panayis, in "The Guns of Navarone" also underwent a sex change for the film, into Maria and Anna.

I didn't realise that change in adaptation had taken place in The Guns of Navarone, G. I've seen the film but not read the book.  I haven't read the source books for the Happy Valley show but people I know who did said one of the lead females on the show was a male in the book.

Paul, last year when we were discussing corsets (I can't remember which thread it was on now), MM provided a good explanation of "strait laced".

Pretty much settled policy for me nowadays - if I have read the book I don't watch the film.

Green George wrote:

The two locals, Louki and Panayis, in "The Guns of Navarone" also underwent a sex change for the film, into Maria and Anna.

"and the men on Kheros were doomed unless they could be evacuated before the blitz"

It was on again last night.

Only in reality, there was no happy ending. The Dodacanese were too far away for Allied air support, and it was like 1940 all over again, the Germans overwhelming the defenders of Leros by the 16th of November 1943. One of the last major German successes of the War:



Leros was altered to the fictional "Kheros" by Alistair MacLean

Does anybody know anything pertaining to African soldiers/citizens/slaves in the Roman Empire?  Someone had written something online (not in a history forum) moaning about there being a black Roman soldier in something shown by the BBC.  I had said, well it wasn't impossible, after all the Roman Empire did go into northern Africa.  The other person said well northern Africans weren't really dark skinned.  It's not something I know a great deal about but I did think it was possible that sub-Saharan Africans could have travelled into northern Egypt following the Nile (maybe for trading purposes).  I'd be interested to know if there is/are any sensible reference book(s) that can be consulted.

Lady,

wanted to start and prepared for a thread about the "musical theatre", but that will be for tomorrow as I have to go to bed by a hint from the partner, as I will be not out of bed before nine...as usual...she said...
But I had just time enough to have a quick search...
http://ianjamesross.com/journal/2018/4/28/aethiops-quidam-e-numero-militari-black-africans-in-the-roman-army


And yes on the fora, even on the BBC, especially from the US, Black Athena, The black Pharaos, Diop and all that, not to say that at the other side the White Supremacists...of course the truth lays mostly in the middle...and there are few even scientists, who will agree, that they just don't know it as there are no proven sources...

Kind regards as always from Paul.

PS. I see now that I forgot to mention in my Brexit thread that I have esteem for May (or is that her man's name, as in Angela Merkel, who in reality calls Angela Kasner. Her mother died yesterday or earlier and of course she is also not named with her maiden name, but as Kasner).
But what I wanted to mention also in my Brexit message as I saw May now several times on television last days, that she has beautiful legs. I don't know about Angela's legs as she wisely covered them with a pair of trousers. But I guess, and I am nearly sure that "Das Mädchen" is older than May. BTW is May her surname and if so how is her forename...?

On the subject of black Romans, take a look at this https://blackpresence.co.uk/black-romans/

Again the feared "no post specified"
I start again...

OOPS Lady, already in bed I suddenly remembered the forename...As they the last days always said PM May, they mentioned many times in the last weeks Theresa May too...of course it has to be Theresa Brasier. What a beautiful French name...Thérèse Brasier...of course in our dialect we make many times "Trees" of it and use it even in a pejorative sense as "stomme Trees" (stupid Trees), at least among us oldies, not sure about the nowadays youngsters...about the language difference between these groups I want to make a thread on the language forum as it is "hors sujet" (out of subject?) overhere...

Kind regards from Paul.

This isn't exactly the topic of this thread, but this thread is the closest I can think of.  I've sometimes been surprised to find that books or dramas have been based upon real historical people.  I mentioned elsewhere that I hadn't realised D'Artagnan and the other three musketeers written about by Alexandre Dumas were based (even if loosely) on historical persons https://www.solosophie.com/real-life-dartagnan-three-musketeers

I listened to the first part of a radio 4 Extra vintage adaptation of one of John Creasey's "Inspector West" novels.  As far as I know Inspector West was fictional but I thought about a TV detective series from back in the day called something like "Fabian of Scotland Yard" (one episode in particular terrified childhood me) and apparently there was a real Inspector Fabian.  Well, they say truth can be stranger than fiction.

I've never made a secret of the fact that Game of Thrones is one of my guilty pleasures.  In the most recent episode some people were complaining about one of the plot points where a mythical flying creature was shot down by bolts from a giant ballista (well a whole lot of giant ballistas - called "scorpions" in the show) - the other mythical flying creature who has a rider escapes.  The ballistas were on a fleet of ships.  Some people were complaining that a ballista would not have been able to hit a high-flying creature and that the rider should have spotted the fleet.  It's a fantasy of course but not everybody is willingly enabling their suspension of disbelief.  The only thing I could think of that might parallel this in real history (because of course mythical flying creatures don't exist) is aeroplanes and guns shooting from the ground.

I'm not a military historian (or a naval or aeroplane historian) but would it be possible for a fleet to lay an ambush cunningly and unnoticed by their enemy?  I don't think a ballista would be able to shoot down an aeroplane but would it be able to shoot down a moving target?  Some criticism came from people saying a ballista would not be able to do so.  With it being fantasy the ballistas were extra large of course.